Here’s the 2016 BostInno Tech Madness Bracket [Voting Now Open]

Introducing the 2016 Tech Madness Bracket: a friendly competition designed to generate awareness and excitement for the Boston tech ecosystem.

The bracket includes 64 local tech companies. The winners of each round will be determined by community voting, with readers answering one question as they decide who to support: Which Boston tech companies do you think will be the most valuable in five years?

Voting Schedule:

Round 1: March 10 – March 15

Round 2: March 16 – March 21

Sweet 16: March 22 – March 24

Elite 8: March 25 – March 29

Final 4: March 30 – April 4

Championship: April 5 – April 7

Champion announced: April 7

Bracket Breakdown:

You get one vote per matchup. (We’re counting one Network ID per round.)

These are not the “64 best tech companies” in Boston. The bracket is a snapshot of the 2016 tech ecosystem, complete with early-stage startups, public pillars, and representatives across different tech sectors in the city.

These 64 companies were culled from the nominations that we received, as well as from internal research and reporting. There will be a number of companies not on this bracket that you believe deserve to be on here. And that’s great; that’s why this community’s so strong. Let us know who you think we missed and we’ll be sure to consider them for 2017.

Seeding for private companies is based primarily on funding. Why? Because we needed an accessible, uniform metric so that these rankings weren’t completely arbitrary. We realize some companies have grown significantly without raising much funding, however, and so we seeded a few of them based on our knowledge of their size.

For seeding the public companies, we used market capitalization.

The Conference names are inspired by four movies that take place in Boston. There is no hidden meaning to which movies are associated to which companies. It’s just fun. (Sorry, “Spotlight,” but these are our favs.)

Finally, if at any time you find yourself getting worked up over any seedings, omissions, inclusions, wins, or losses, I’m offering up Kyle Gross, our GM, to take you out to grab a beer, take a few deep breaths together, and talk about how we can work together to generate even more excitement for the Boston ecosystem in the future. We always want to hear what you’re up to.